


Carpe Noctem

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 5000-10000 Words, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Episode Related, Episode: s03e11 Past and Present, Episode: s06e12 Unnatural Selection, Episode: s07e21 Lost City (1), First Time, Graphic Sex, M/M, Massage, Missing Scene, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rimming, Season/Series 07, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-14
Updated: 2005-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 17:50:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still another iteration of the missing time in 'Lost City Part 1.' This is the one with the conversation in the kitchen and the ginormous-single-paragraph Daniel speech in the middle of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carpe Noctem

Daniel was the only one left, after Hammond took Teal'c back to the mountain and Carter beat her hasty retreat. It made sense; this had begun with Daniel, it should end with Daniel.

Well, it had begun with Jack alone in this house; it had begun with him up on the roof deck, looking for an unusual occultation of Saturn's moons, and then a dark sedan pulling up out front and an Air Force officer taking him away to the next part of his life. Last night he'd sat up on the roof deck, unconsciously recapitulating that beginning. No sedan would come this time. He'd be chauffering himself to the last part of his life.

But the important part, the Daniel part, the Daniel-as-part-of-his-life part, had begun with Daniel in that chair in the corner, dazed with trauma and dislocation and stoned on one beer. The program was a different story; the program was about Carter and Jackson and always had been. His story, these past seven years, had been about Daniel. Eight years, if he was honest about it.

He knew that Daniel knew it. You didn't not-know something like that. You didn't miss signals like that.

Daniel was clearing the empties from the coffee table, the side tables. Jack snagged his half-finished beer, the last of the stout, by the neck and followed him as far as the kitchen doorway. Watched him rinse bottles out, put them in a blue recycling bag he'd found somewhere.

"I thought you might swing by last night," Jack said, on a slug of beer. Watching.

"You always took the initiative in that department," Daniel said. Rinsing. Bagging.

"You didn't need an invitation this afternoon."

"I wouldn't have come this afternoon. That was Teal'c's idea."

Jack drained the dregs of the stout and crossed the kitchen to hand the bottle to Daniel. Daniel took it, eyes briefly meeting his, sidelong. Giving nothing up by their expression; giving everything up by their lack of expression. Jack moved over to the coffeemaker. It was all set up -- water, filter, grounds -- but no one had turned it on. He vaguely remembered Carter making tea for herself and Hammond at one point, the cry of the boiling kettle.

Jack flipped the switch to Brew, and said, "So there's no scenario in which you would ever make the first move."

He caught a bitter twitch of smile in his peripheral vision, there and then gone. Daniel said, "Is this where we finally Talk About It?" His tone was silken, challenging.

"Maybe. If you're willing to give it a shot. My number being up and everything."

Daniel finished with the empties, dried his hands on a dishtowel, then cocked a hip against the sink counter, leaning. His smile was small, and sweet, and terrible. "So talk," he said softly.

Guy made an art form of passive-aggression. Knew just how to piss Jack off, punch every button. Did it on purpose, to derail him any time he got on a serious track. Usually worked -- because Jack let it.

He didn't bite this time. He picked at the edge of the counter, the dark little valley where the facings didn't quite meet. "This thing between us," he said. Then scowled. Stopped.

"That was good," Daniel said, after a moment. He was almost laughing. "That was a really good start." He folded his arms, relaxed into a mockery of attentiveness. "Anything else?"

Jack was silent, struggling not to let Daniel goad him into anger. This _one time_, not to let Daniel push him away by pissing him off. _He's giving me an out,_ he realized. _Every time he does this, he's giving me the easy out. And I take it every time._

He took a breath, opened his mouth, and choked on eight years of history. Bottleneck. Dead stop. Nowhere to begin, because it all had to be said, and he couldn't say any of it.

"OK, Jack," Daniel said. Gently now. The pitying, paternalistic tone was _guaranteed_ to piss him off. "You want me to help? You want me to do it for you?"

Jack knew his next line. He could hear it in his head, like some prompter whispering in response to cues. _Fuck this_, he'd say. _Fuck this and fuck you. Go home, Daniel. Go do whatever the fuck it is you do on the weekends._ Instead, forcing the words out, he said, "I wouldn't mind a little help. Now that you mention it."

Daniel looked genuinely surprised, but he snorted, a soft huff of disgust, as if he wasn't falling for Jack's crap either. "Really," he said. "OK. Here you go. Do you want to fuck me, Jack?"

Shocked, Jack jerked, very slightly. "Jesus _Christ_, Daniel."

"Too cut-to-the-chase for you? Sorry about that. But really, I mean, I'm curious. If I'd just put out for you, that year before I ascended, would that have solved the whole thing? Vented the pressure? Or would you just have hated me more?"

_I'd have loved you more, you stupid prick. I'd have loved you too much to be your CO anymore, as if I ever was, as if you ever did one damned thing I ever told you to do without twisting it somehow. It was crazy to put you in harm's way to begin with, crazy to put either of you there, any of you, you're all way too valuable to the program to be in a field unit. I had to protect you. I had to keep a clear head. If I knew what you were like in bed I'd never let you go back out there again. I'd've shoved you behind a desk and it would've killed you._

But that wasn't it either.

Daniel waited, patiently. The coffee percolated, loudly in the silence. The fridge condenser hummed, then cut out.

"That's not what it was about," Jack managed. Drowning in words he should be able to say and couldn't.

Daniel sighed. "Just answer the question, then. Yes or no. Do you want to fuck me?"

"That's a crappy way to say it, Daniel."

"Is that a yes?"

Jack looked away; pressed his eyes closed, hard, let them blink open on a wince. "Yes."

"There," Daniel said, almost a whisper. "Progress. Good."

"This is progress?" Jack said, looking at him. Amazed by the intense pain that flared between them where that electric charge had always been.

"Well, yeah. I mean, it clarifies things."

Jack considered his next words the way a death-row inmate would consider his choice between lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair, and then said, "Clarifies how?"

Daniel smiled at him again. It was a silky challenge. It was almost seductive. It was _I'm going into lengthy-exposition mode now, I give you seven seconds before you shut me down_. It was a dare.

Jack made a sweeping gesture: _go right ahead_.

Daniel did.

"Before, I could only guess that that's what it was," he said. "I mean, there could be a lot of reasons for the way things changed. Maybe I started to be a threat to you. Or maybe you hated yourself for the way I changed. Maybe it was a combination. You corrupted me by putting a gun in my hand, and at the same time I was emasculating you with my pacifism, and both of those drove you nuts, to the point where you could barely stand to be around me. But a change that profound -- I mean, I know how exasperated you were, in the beginning, what a _terrific pain in the ass_ I was, but you loved me, Jack. You touched me all the time, handled me, pushed me around. It was obnoxious and annoying but it meant more to me than I could ever risk telling you. And then boom, one day it stops. No more football Sundays, no more showing up at my place to drag me out to get a life. Suddenly every word out of your mouth is devaluing me and the things that matter to me. The first time you thought I died, you trashed Hammond's car with a hockey stick and threatened to quit; the second time, you hugged me in front of a roomful of Marines. A hug -- not a manly embrace, an all-out, corny hug. You were beside yourself with relief and happiness. It stunned me, the love in that hug. How do you go from that to the way you treated me those last few months? I don't know if you remember the conversation we had in your head before I ascended, but you looked at me as if I were a dog you'd gotten fond of, a stray dog you'd fed and sheltered for a while that had decided to move along and so you patted it on the head and sent it on its way. How do you go from the one to the other like that? I thought it must be because of the old-married-couple jokes, the innuendoes in the locker room. I thought it shocked the shit out of you when you clued in that everyone thought I'd been taking it up the ass from you for years. That might explain the way you backed off in public. That would explain you becoming a total hardassed prick to me. But it didn't explain why you _hated_ me. Then I thought, Crap, Colonel Alpha Male Heterosexual Military Guy actually wants me. We're not talking latent homosexual urges here, we're talking lust that he's aware of, with all the attendant freakage. There had to be freakage, for you to act like that. You're a big kid with ADD, but you're not the little boy who torments the little girl next door because he doesn't know any other way to show her he likes her. It had to be more serious than that. So I thought, OK, suppose I send a few signals, would that be better or worse? If you knew you could have what you wanted, would you take it, get it out of your system, or at least beat the shit out of me so we could move on? Maybe I should have done that. But I couldn't, Jack. I couldn't whore myself to your issues that way. I would have taken it from you almost any way I could get it, but not like that. Not so you could pat me on the head and say hey that was great now how about we grab some takeout and catch the rest of the game. I loved you, Jack. That would have broken my heart. And then the light dawned. Then I realized what the reason must have been. It was the only thing that could have made you so uncomfortable with me, made you turn on me like that. You knew how I felt, and you couldn't stand it. If we could have just fucked and relieved the sexual tension, that might have worked for you. But not if I betrayed you by falling in love with you the same way everyone else in the world does." Daniel paused, finally, eyes a little wide. As if he threw himself at a cliff when he started talking, revved himself up and opened the throttle and floored it, and had gotten so used to Jack stopping him dead in his tracks that the open air shocked him. He blinked -- a 'wow, what a rush' blink -- then shook his head a little and gave that small twitch of closemouthed smile. "So, there. There it is. My side of it. All I can offer. So you want to fuck me. I was right about that. Is this coffee done? It stopped dripping."

Jack stepped away from the coffeemaker as if he'd just remembered that it might burn him. He made a sloppy gesture toward it. He felt weak-- wrist-slashed, hamstrung, bled-out.

Daniel opened the overhead cabinet, snagged two mugs, and moved to fill them.

"You're shaking," Jack said. Brilliant observation.

"Of course I am," Daniel said. "What did you think would happen if we Talked About It?" He turned, moved to the fridge, pulled out half-and-half. "You thought we'd have one of those fractured, incomprehensible dialogues and walk away pretending we sorted something out?"

"No," Jack said, watching him cream and sugar the two coffees, one heavily, one lightly. "I didn't want to have one of those conversations tonight."

Daniel handed him his mug. "Good," he said. He sipped. "Well, thanks for listening to my spiel. I guess you asked for it, but still. You listened. That's ... good."

"Progress," Jack said, to his coffee.

"No," Daniel said. "Just good. Different. There's nothing to make progress toward."

"No?" Jack looked up. "How about understanding?"

Daniel's gaze flickered. Hit a nerve there. "Well, yeah, if that's actually what you want. I don't know what you want, Jack."

"You're pretty fucking good at guessing."

Daniel shrugged. "Sure. They're just guesses, though." He sipped his coffee; it took both hands to bring it to his mouth without spilling any. He didn't seem bothered by that; he accepted it, no embarrassment, and forged ahead, lifting, sipping.

"You missed the most obvious thing. Out of all those scenarios."

Daniel huffed air through his nose. "Out of all those words, huh. So much for the hundred chimpanzees."

"I got the damn signals, Daniel. I picked up on the goddamn vibe, OK?"

Daniel gave his coffee a look half blank, half wary. "Um ... OK. I guess I should apologize for being so transparent. I shut down as hard as I could. I guess it wasn't hard enough."

"It was too hard." Jack was gripping the hot mug so tightly it burned. He didn't know why the ceramic didn't crunch into pieces inside the bones of his hand. "You went so deep sometimes I thought we'd never see you again. If that was because of me, I didn't know it. You -- There've been a lot of -- " He took a breath. "I don't know how to work through pain, Daniel. I suck it up and move on. I know it'll break me sometime, but I figure I'll take a bullet or a staff blast before that happens. I guess I figured you were doing the same. I just let you. It was a mistake. I let you go. When you ascended. Hardest thing I ever did. I'd have done anything to keep you with us. With ... me. Anything but stop you from doing what you felt you had to do."

Daniel looked up slowly. "You remember that conversation."

"Yeah. I remember. I didn't remember right away, all I knew was that you'd told me you had to go and I believed you so I stopped what Jacob was doing, and I might have gone out and driven my truck off a cliff after that except that I could still feel you. Like a breath, like your breath on my face. I knew you weren't dead. You were having the time of your life doing the higher-being thing. So I sucked it up and moved on. But something happened on Hala. The replicator planet."

"I read the report."

"This wasn't in the report. They stuck their hands in our heads and grabbed our memories and twisted. First showed me my son again. Made me relive that -- day -- over and over again. He tried to leverage me with it. But after a while he figured out he couldn't hurt me with that. He couldn't show me anything I didn't relive every day of my life. So he found some memories I didn't know I had. That was one of them. Everything I didn't want to face. Everything about you. How you -- reacted. When I cut you off. I didn't remember, none of us remembered when we first came around, but it came back, later on. What an asshole I'd been."

"But you got the signals," Daniel said, struggling to understand. Still not looking at him. Which he could see, even though he still wasn't looking at Daniel. "You got the vibe. You must have known, then. You could have had me anytime, Jack."

"And break your heart? Again?"

"I thought we were talking about sex."

"I'm talking about love, Daniel. It's the same thing, for me. Where you're concerned."

Daniel looked up slowly. "That was really hard for you to say. Why? Because I'm male? Because you're military?"

"Because of who we are, god fucking dammit. What we do. I couldn't ... It couldn't be _love_, Daniel, can't you see that? I can't be your CO anymore. Team leader. Whatever the fuck I've been. I can't be that, even now, just from this conversation. Even if I live. Carter's gonna have to take over, next day or so, and that's fine, that's how it has to be, but this is one of the reasons now. As long as I could squelch the other stuff, I could handle it, I could do what I had to do. But ... " He put the coffee mug down on the counter before he threw it across the room. "Fuck. It's already too late. I guess it doesn't matter anymore. But I didn't know that would happen."

"What did you want to happen here, Jack?"

"I guess I didn't want to die without trying to tell you the truth. What you've always ... " _meant to me_. "I thought ... " _you wanted me, but I was afraid you loved me, and I couldn't have you loving me that way, I couldn't have you doing that_. "I wasn't sure what you wanted. I wanted to know." He laughed, suddenly, no humor in it. "I didn't think you'd _tell_ me."

Daniel looked at him for a long time. His eyes moved, minutely. Same way they did when he read. Not scanning line after line the way most people did; seeing most of an entire page at a time, just a little shimmy of vision down the center. As if he was translating what he saw, he said, "You don't want anyone to love you. You're too high-risk. You can stand any pain but the pain of knowing that your death will break ... well, me, for example."

"Pretty much."

"Well, it's too late." Daniel let out a deep, shaky sigh, then turned, crossing his arms, hugging himself. A gesture Jack hadn't seen in a long time. "I guess this wasn't so much about fucking, then."

"Not so much," Jack said, turning the same way, butt braced against the counter. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Not that I didn't want some of that. A lot of that. A lot."

"It would ruin you."

"Maybe. If somebody wanted me bad enough to expend the resources it would take to prove it. That kind of surveillance ain't cheap."

"They want you bad enough. They've been looking at us for that for years. It would make it so easy for them. You and Sam, too."

"Yeah. I know." Jack felt a bitter smile twitch across his mouth, and recognized it, because it was Daniel's smile. "So no crying over wasted years. Everything we've accomplished, yadda yadda -- none of that would have happened."

"If ... ?"

Fucker was making him say it. "If we'd had this conversation two, three, four years ago. And then done something about it." Because the next question from Daniel was _So now what?_, he said, "You'll find someone, Daniel. That's part of it too. I want that for you. If I'd said something, you might have ... I don't know, maybe waited for me. Waited for me to retire, waited for us to win this war ... I couldn't have you doing that."

"All right. I know what you're saying. I also know it's not going to happen. That's not self-pity or martyrdom. It's just a fact. It was never going to happen. You or not you. I was done, Jack. I was done, after Sha're."

"Yeah, it sure looked that way from where Ke'ra was standing."

"Oh my _god_ don't start that again. You just couldn't believe that I'd defend her on ethical grounds, could you? You had to believe my judgment was impaired because I was screwing her. What a steaming crock of shit."

"Well, if you were done, how do you explain this?"

"You didn't come along afterward. You weren't the next one. You were already there. You were there before I even met Sha're. It goes that far back for me. I just didn't see it until later."

That took Jack by surprise. He hadn't seen it at all. "You do a lot of guys, before that? I thought she was your first either way."

Daniel started to answer, then stopped, then said, "If you want a complete sexual history, Jack, I'll give it to you, but I want to go sit down, and I want to know if you've decided whether or not this is eventually going to move to the bedroom."

"Why is that my decision?"

"Because both parties have to be willing, and I'm willing, so you're the question mark."

The word 'willing' conjured an uninvited picture of Daniel nude and supine in his bed, arched and moaning. He flushed, his hands white-knuckling on the counter's edge. "Carpe diem, huh?"

"That was Latin, right? Not Ancient?"

"Yes, Daniel."

"Then yeah. Something like that. It can't hurt any more when I lose you, Jack. I guess I'd rather have had you first. But maybe that's just, you know, me."

"If we start, I'm not gonna want to stop."

"So you'd rather be miserable? Sit and brood and pick your scabs and grumble about how much the waiting sucks, because then it's a relief when the end comes?"

"Fuck you."

"That was a serious question. That would be a legitimate choice. I'm not mocking you."

"You are so mocking me."

"OK, I'm mocking you a little. But I understand if that's what you'd prefer. It hurts a lot, having something you know you're going to lose. The way I see it, all of life is like that; the losing part just isn't so in-your-face for most people. On the other hand, sex might spectacularly suck, and we'd be miserable _and_ mortified."

"I don't think that's real likely."

"No. Neither do I."

Daniel wasn't going to ask him again. Slowly, Jack said, "I'd kinda like to lay on a fire. Maybe sit by it for a while. Find out some stuff that I never had the balls to ask you about." He looked away, wincing again. "I just want you here, Daniel. That's really all I ever wanted."

"You got it," Daniel said softly, and reached to pour himself more coffee.

Jack turned and caught him at the wrist. Daniel looked up slowly, his gaze a mixture of wariness and hope, longing and stubborn defiance. His wrist felt thick and solid in Jack's hand, fleshy. He felt tendons contract, then relax. Wiry hairs against his palm. Fast pulse. "But we could try the bed thing first," Jack said.

Daniel nodded, watching him. Jack let go of his wrist slowly. How long since he'd touched him, even a pat on the shoulder? They stood beside each other, near each other, instinctively, all the time, but always flanking, never facing. He'd conditioned himself against his own affectionate, tactile impulses, trained himself never to touch Daniel. He had no idea how cruel that was. Now he saw Daniel's wariness for what it was. A look of boyish vulnerability. The look of someone who expects to be rejected -- to be hurt.

On a surge of pain, he pulled Daniel into his arms. Pulled him close, threading a hand up into his hair. The muscular body tensed against him. He turned his face in to Daniel's ear, and then buried it in his neck and squeezed tight. Inhaled deeply, rich warm Daniel-smell rising on the air his body heated, a whiff of dust and old ink, a tang of nervous sweat, an appley fragrance from his hair.

A tremor went through Daniel, and then he melted. His body went liquid, molten in Jack's arms, supple and fluid, a sinuous curve of spine, a weight of tension-drained muscle. A low sound came out of him; his arms moved slowly around Jack, closed on him. There was a shared jolt as the bulge of erections touched body parts; his sank into Daniel's groin, Daniel's pressed into his thigh. There was a pause that felt like forever, a pause that was nobody rubbing, nobody pushing, nobody committing. Then Jack pressed his palm into the base of Daniel's spine, and Daniel yielded, and his hips came forward.

Jack breathed Daniel's name into the hollow of his neck, hot damp breath on his shirt, through it into his skin. He scrunched his fingers into Daniel's scalp, delved his palm into the cluster of nerves in Daniel's lower back. The helpless writhe he got in response told him everything he needed to know. "Daniel," he breathed again, then lifted his head, found his ear. "Come on inside."

Daniel nodded again. Jack turned, slung an arm around his neck. Maneuvered him out into the hall and down to the bedroom. Turned him again, next to the unmade bed, in the dark, and started unbuttoning his shirt. His stomach contracted when Daniel reached under his pullover to unbuckle his belt, then undo his pants. He toed out of his running shoes. As his pants dropped, he pushed the shirt back over Daniel's shoulders. Daniel moved his arms back and let it drop to the floor.

Jack stepped out of his pants, undoing Daniel's. Daniel hadn't been wearing shoes for hours now. He stepped out of his slacks and then slipped away from Jack's fingers on the waistband of his briefs, sitting down and scooching back on the bed. Jack followed him, and only pushed his own briefs off when Daniel did. He'd never seen Daniel's bare penis erect before, though he knew the shape of it from the sight of many a morning boner offworld. He caught only a glimpse of it in the dark, his eyes not quite adapted yet.

He smoothed a hand up over Daniel's chest instead of touching it. The skin was warm, a little flushed. Creamy smooth. His fingertips grazed a nipple, and Daniel's breath hitched. He was reaching up for his glasses. He took them off, folded them, and handed them to Jack to put on the nightstand. The trust in that gesture did something funny to his gut.

Still leaning toward the nightstand, Jack hesitated.

"Latex at your discretion," Daniel said.

_I'm not the one who has to worry_ and _You should never_ and _I don't care who_ flickered through Jack's mind, but the truth was he didn't have any damn latex. He also didn't have any STDs, but he didn't want Daniel to trust him on that.

"God, you don't have any, do you," Daniel said, laughing.

"I don't bring people home," Jack said, irritably. "I don't bring them anywhere else either. I just ... don't, anymore."

"Neither do I. So no worries about condoms then. That's good. I hate latex."

"Everybody hates latex. You shouldn't take my word for this."

"And you shouldn't take mine. But we're going to, because we're both telling the truth."

Jack didn't bother pointing out that that was the lamest logic he'd ever heard. It was Daniel logic, and it made its own kind of sense, the way Daniel's always did. He came back with a lightly used tube of lubricant, a better brand than drugstores sold. "You know I don't have to be the one to, ah ... "

"I want you to," Daniel said. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Yeah," Jack said quietly, dropping the lube between the pillows and laying his hand back on Daniel's chest. "I do."

Daniel picked up the hand and brought it to his mouth. Ran Jack's fingertips lightly around his lips, parting them, letting out a soft breath. His eyes slid closed. He pushed two of Jack's fingers into his mouth and sucked on them, softly. Stroked them with his tongue. Sucked a little harder, moving them in and out as they slickened. Jack's other fingers curled. Jack's toes curled.

It went on for a while, every sensation in his fingers transferred by proxy down to his dick. Then Daniel stroked nails across his palm, making him shiver, gave the hand back, and did a slow, perfect barrel roll to turn himself over.

Jack didn't know if he was a virgin to this. A sharp need to know spiked through him, then faded. It wouldn't change anything he did. He loved this body, fiercely. He'd treat it the same way no matter what. The only past in this bed was theirs. Later, Daniel would tell him. Later, he'd tell Daniel.

He kneed between Daniel's legs. Daniel spread for him, and for a second he couldn't breathe. He smoothed a hand over the beautiful curve of ass, and it pushed up into the touch. He reached the lube down closer to hand. Daniel reached under himself, adjusting his dick, and then sank down, pushing the pillow up against the headboard, laying his cheek on the sheet, arms loose over his head. He looked relaxed, but he was trembling. His eyes were closed.

Jack stroked both hands up over his ass again, gently, and continued upward, over the muscle along his backbone, over the delts, over his shoulders into his neck. He came down with fingernails, and Daniel let out a low sound and writhed down into the mattress.

Sensitive, responsive. Willing. A long time since he'd been touched.

An ache throbbed through Jack's dick, to feel the way Daniel responded to his hands. He delved fingernails, fingertips down through the soft flesh of buttocks and started a deep, warm massage of tight quads. The quads eased, and he moved deep into the glutes, then up the curve of spine with the heels of his hands, leaning into it. He'd loved Daniel's body before it bulked up, but it was breathtaking now, sculpted and defined. He learned the shape of it by feel, working the chronic tension out of delts and traps, working over the broad muscled shoulders into the neck.

Daniel turned his face down into the mattress. As Jack's thumbs rolled and probed at the base of his neck, he let out a lower sound, a groan of ecstasy, and the trembling finally stopped. Jack isolated every seized muscle, gently soothed and stretched tight tendons and ligaments. Then he massaged up into Daniel's hair, deep into his scalp. He could almost feel the release of blood, the flow of it down the spine. Daniel groaned again, and thrust a little, weak and involuntary.

Jack stroked fingernails down his sides and dug gently in to relax the hip flexors. It brought him close to Daniel's groin, and he felt a tightening, a tremor. Daniel's head turned to the side again, eyes open. Jack braced his arms to either side and leaned down, pressed his face just inside the left shoulder blade, his mouth. He meant to kiss, softly, but his mouth turned, closed over the blade of bone. He sucked, tasting salt and sweetness and Daniel, and something like a whine came through his nose. His dick didn't quite brush Daniel's ass. He pushed back onto his haunches before he thrust into the crack. Smoothed his hands slow and warm down Daniel's back until the slight tightness eased back into receptiveness, trust. Then he ran his hands up the backs of Daniel's legs, thumbs light on his inner thighs. Stroked.

It was a question. Daniel spread wider and lifted for him. That was the answer. Jack turned his right hand and slid it between Daniel's legs to gently cup his balls.

"Yes," Daniel said, pelvis rising. "Oh god, yes, yes."

Jack slid his hand up and closed it around Daniel's penis. He gave one slow, warm squeeze, with a kind of awe. It was heavy, thicker than his. He thought he could come just from the feel of it filling his hand, the weight of balls against his wrist.

Daniel was panting in short, soft exhalations. Jack eased his hand out and pressed down gently on Daniel's butt with both palms, easing him back into the mattress. Daniel winced and groaned as his erection rubbed into the sheet. Jack squeezed his butt, soothing, gentling. "Try not to come," he said, soft and hoarse. "I don't know how long ... how much ... Just try. OK?"

"OK," Daniel said, in a low voice. His fingers dug into the pillow. A deep flush had spread down the back of his neck. He was still slightly raised, the weight of his pelvis not sunk into the bed. He was just about the most beautiful thing Jack had ever seen.

Almost delicately, Jack ran his thumbs up into the cleft of Daniel's ass, hands splayed across his cheeks, and parted them, exposing the most intimate place on his body. Curling over, he blew air lightly over the hole, and watched it contract. Daniel was poised and still. Jack bent his head and touched his tongue tip lightly to the center of Daniel's anus. From way above him, Daniel said, "Oh." The opening bloomed, hot inside, tender. Jack stroked it with his tongue, traced a circle around the rim, light and dry, teasing neglected nerve endings. Then he pressed in again. The taste was sharp, tart. His mouth actually watered. The texture was sublime. He moved his face in deep and sucked, his tongue moving thick and wet.

Daniel's high, soft, disbelieving moans were muffled in the bedding. The tender flesh of his asshole trembled against Jack's lips and tongue. It was intensely sweet, intensely hot. It was inebriating, how good it felt. Jack wormed his tongue as far in as it would go, feeling the throb of pulse on pulse. Then, reluctantly, he shifted back a little to stroke the soft hairs with his tongue tip.

He'd do this forever, if he could. But they didn't have forever, and the position was killing his neck. He made himself draw back. The sight of Daniel wet and open turned him on so much he had to rest for a second, sip breaths. He wanted in. He wanted in there so badly he could feel it in the tip of his cock.

He ran his thumbs up the crack, spreading him, and then did it again, stopping at the hole, pushing in just a little and then pulling, opening it. When his spit started to dry, he reached for the lube. Thumbed a dollop of gel in gently, massaging cool slickness into the overheated flesh in slow, diminishing circles, until his thumb was crooked, angled for entry.

Daniel pushed back, off the headboard, every muscle in his body pleading. Jack pushed his thumb in, corkscrewing slowly. Daniel said "Yes" and pushed instead of contracting on him, and Jack's thumb sank in deeper and found the gland as it turned. Daniel twitched and cried out into the mattress. Jack took hold of Daniel's hipbone with his left hand and pistoned slowly into the swell of gland, his fingers brushing Daniel's balls, the ball of his hand pressing the perineum. He groaned, himself, overwhelmed at being inside Daniel's body, at holding him this way in his hands, pressing, pleasuring him. Tremors ran down Daniel's thighs and his hands fisted in the pillow over his head.

"Jack," he said, with queer clarity in his shaky voice, "I'll come. Ease off the prostate unless you want me to come."

The words nearly made Jack come. He eased off. Worked his thumb in slow circles just inside, and lubed his other thumb one-handed, drew out, fit it tight against the first. Slowly, carefully, he pushed in with both together. Daniel groaned, deeply, and raised his hips and pushed back onto him, pushed him deep. "God, _yes_," Daniel said. His voice was low, chesty. It was a sexual, animal sound. He pushed, and Jack pushed deeper, pulling outward, spreading him, and Daniel pushed up onto his elbows and said Jack's name, low and raw.

Jack eased his thumbs out. He lubed his dick gingerly. He was close, too close. Daniel waited on elbows and knees, his head hanging, breathing through his mouth. Jack rose off his haunches and spread his knees. _I can't believe I'm doing this_ went through his mind, in so many words, and then Daniel's ass was mouthing the head of his cock and Daniel's hips were cocking back, begging for it, demanding it, and after eight years of wet dreams and soulless casual and numbing celibacy and empty, aching masturbation and stopping by Daniel's lab ten times a day just to take hits off the sight of him and lying awake all night in tents just listening to him breathe, eight years of longing and denial and frustration and pain and intolerable emptiness, he pushed into Daniel's body.

He clenched his teeth and tried to keep it slow, measured. But Daniel pushed back, and bore down inside, and Jack slid all the way home.

Heat and muscle and tight, it was so tight, so hot -- Daniel slammed the headboard with the flat of his hand, bracing hard. Jack wanted to draw him up and back into his arms, into his lap, wanted to come holding him, stroking his dick, but Daniel trembled forward and Jack pushed to follow, groping for handholds, just trying to hang on. He wanted to do this right, get the angle, long slow strokes, but he was coming, he couldn't stop it. "Daniel I can't, I cah ... ohchristpleasecome" -- and then he broke with a gut-punched gasp.

Daniel's body jerked hard with the first shot. Then his back arched and he convulsed, letting out a harsh bark. Jack kept coming as the tight, fast contractions rippled up the back of Daniel; Jack was coming in pulse after pulse of release so intense that his whole body shook with the force of it, and Daniel's ass was still squeezing in spasms as the climax started to ebb, sucking more out of him, milking him dry. It was the most muscular, powerful orgasm he'd ever felt anyone have, and before he was finished he was curling over him, wrapping around him, trying to protect him, shield him, hold him together.

Daniel's arm buckled and his knees slid back and they sank heavily into the mattress, heaving. Daniel shuddered once, hard, and then went still. Aftershocks twinged through Jack at intervals. He nuzzled sloppily into Daniel's hair. He wanted to kiss him but he didn't know if Daniel would accept that from him, and he'd just had his tongue up his ass, he should get up, brush his teeth.

He couldn't have moved if the house were on fire.

After a long time, Daniel stirred. Said his name.

"Hmm?" he murmured back. He hadn't realized he was drowsing.

"Gonna have to get up. Use the bathroom. Soon."

"OK," Jack said. He felt poleaxed by afterglow, dazed and stupid. "Now?"

"Now's probably good," Daniel said. Jack located his knees, found some memory of bone and muscle in his arms, pushed up; drew wincingly out, grunting apology when Daniel shuddered; rolled to the side in an effort of uncoordinated limbs. Daniel turned out of drenched, sticky sheets and rolled up sitting, swaying a little. "I'm sorry," he said. "This part isn't that pretty. I wasn't expecting anything like this tonight."

The implication of experience sent a jealous twinge through Jack's gut, embarrassing and unwelcome. Possessiveness -- as though Daniel, a creature of light, could belong to anyone, least of all him. At the same time, and maybe related, he felt another surge of protectiveness. He ran a big, clumsy hand over Daniel's shoulder. "Not a problem, Daniel."

He followed Daniel into the bathroom, washed his hands while Daniel sat, started brushing his teeth. When Daniel groaned, elbows on knees and head in hands, Jack turned with the toothbrush in his mouth and stood next to him, running soothing fingers through the damp, tousled hair.

"I think you shot all the way up into my _sinuses_," Daniel moaned.

Jack stroked, and said, through a froth of toothpaste, "Hope you're not allergic to it."

Daniel laughed, and then groaned again, and Jack moved the hand down to his neck and squeezed gently. "Push," he said. "You'll feel better in a second." Daniel groaned, and pushed, and Jack went back to the sink while he was wiping up, and finished brushing his teeth and his tongue. "You want a washcloth or a shower?" he said, between rinses and spits.

"Shower, I think," Daniel said. He picked at crystallizing patches on his chest and belly. "I came pretty much everywhere."

Jack ran the shower for him while Daniel got up, unsteadily, and flushed. Then he moved behind him, slid arms around. Kissed down into the hollow of his neck. Moved his hand down to cup the sweet, heavy softness between his legs. Daniel's head lolled back and he let out a breathy, helpless sound of surprise and pleasure.

"I love you, Daniel," he said, low into his ear. "Not because you just let me do that. I've always loved you. Do you believe me?"

Daniel tilted his head, eyes closed, and let his face be nuzzled. "I believe you," he said. "Do you believe that this is worth it to me, no matter what happens?"

It was Jack's turn to go still. Then he dropped his head, squeezed tighter, hands on chest and belly, drinking in the long warm length of body against his, as if he could memorize it with his skin, make the feel of this the one thing the Ancients couldn't erase. "I'll try," he said, soft and a little hoarse, and then made himself pull back, push Daniel gently toward the shower. "I'll lay out some sweats for you and get the fire started," he said. "That OK? There's a fresh towel here on the bar."

"Yeah," Daniel said, sliding the door back, disappearing into the steam. He liked his showers so hot that they curled Jack's hair.

Jack soaped a warm washcloth and cleaned himself up, then went out to pull sweats and socks on, lay clothes over a chair for Daniel, get the fire going. It was only ten. The Ancients were only rustling in his mind, not pushing him yet, not taking pieces of him away. There was still time. A little time.

Daniel was right; he couldn't stand it. But Daniel was right, and so he would. If all he had was one day, or one night, it was more than he deserved, and not a gift he would reject. If he could see Daniel beside him, relaxed and happy, even content, for just one hour -- in this house, where he'd always belonged, in this sterile, empty house that was a home only when Daniel was in it -- he thought that maybe he could accept this death by erasure, this death by possession, because for one blessed hour they'd made one thing, the most important thing, right.


End file.
